Contract Negotiation Tips for Japanese Corporations #3 Disregard Common Posturing and Obvious Negotiating Tactics
American companies will often utilize a range of tactics to gain a more favorable position and result. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but Japanese corporations need to be able to identify such tactics for what they are and react appropriately. Some tactics are used more when a Japanese (presumably non-native speakers of English) company is involved.
In particular, Japanese companies should not react to the other parties demands or insinuations such as the following:
- Claims that the contract/policy/language under discussion is a standard which is used throughout the organization.
- Claims that the contract/policy/language under discussion is standard in the USA, U.K etc.
- Claims that a particular term, phrase or section is “just a definition” and therefore unimportant.
- Claims that a term or phrase is unimportant due to lack of enforcement in the past.
- Demands for the negotiations to be wrapped up in an unreasonable time period due to some irrelevant event such as the upcoming summer vacations or a visit to Japan by the other party’s management.
- Summons of the company’s management to visit the other party “to finalize” or “move forward” at an unreasonably early period in the negotiations.
- Claims stating that other partners/suppliers/developers/companies have already signed the exact same agreement and had no issues at all with it.
- Claims that the company lawyer must agree to all terms before the contract can be signed.
All of the above and their variations are common negotiating tactics used by many Western firms.